Users of the World Wide Web distributed computing environment may freely send and retrieve data across long distances and between remote computing devices. The Web, implemented on the Internet, presents users with documents called “web pages” that may contain information as well as “hyperlinks” which allow the users to select and connect to related web sites. The web pages may be stored on remote computing devices, or servers, as hypertext-encoded files. The servers use Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), or other protocols to transfer the encoded files to client users. Many users may remotely access the web sites stored on network-connected computing devices from a personal computer (PC) through a browser application running on the PC.
The browser application may act as an interface between user PCs and remote computing devices and may allow the user to view or access data that may reside on any remote computing device connected to the PC through the World Wide Web and browser interface. Typically, the local user PC and the remote computing device may represent a client and a server, respectively. Further, the local user PC or client may access Web data without knowing the source of the data or its physical location and publication of Web data may be accomplished by simply assigning to data a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that refers to the local file. To a local client, the Web may appear as a single, coherent data delivery and publishing system in which individual differences between other clients or servers may be hidden.
A system may provide web site proprietors with web site user demographics information and is generally described in U.S. application Ser. No. 09/080,946, “DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION GATHERING AND INCENTIVE AWARD SYSTEM AND METHOD” to Bistriceanu et al., the entire disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference. Generally, the system may include users, web site proprietors, and an enterprise system hosting a central web site. The users may register with the central web site and may earn “points” for performing specific on- or off-line tasks in exchange for disclosing their demographic information during registration. The users may then redeem their earned points at participating proprietors for merchandise or services. Generally, the central web site manages the system by performing a number of tasks including: maintaining all user demographic information, tracking user point totals, and awarding points according to specific, proprietor-defined rules. Proprietors may effectively market their products or services to specific users based on the provided demographic information.
A demographic information gathering and incentive award system may encounter complications due to the empirical unreliability of member email deliverability. ISPs and other companies may obfuscate whether an email address is actually valid or not under some conditions in an effort to shield customers from unwanted e-mails or “spam.” Further, it may be difficult or impossible to inquire to an ISP whether a given email address at an ISP domain is valid. However, one method of determining whether an e-mail address is invalid may be to send an email to the address and analyze a response if the e-mail is returned or “bounced.” Responses may indicate that the email address doesn't exist, or its mailbox is full, or that the sender is blocked. Furthermore, due to bugs and misconfigurations, an ISP may incorrectly report that an email address doesn't exist depending on exactly which of the ISP's multiple email servers receive the email and the server configuration. An ISP may also accept the email and deliver it to the intended recipient, simply accept the email and silently discard it. In other situations, an email bounce may be misrouted and never be received by the sender.
In a demographic information gathering and incentive award system, marketers may desire to reach a minimum number of potential customers during a bulk e-mail campaign or test. However, as described above, many customer e-mail addresses may become inactive before a targeted e-mail can be sent, or the address may contain other errors that do not allow it to reach its intended recipient. A campaign that requires a minimum number of e-mails to be sent must ensure that the number of bounced e-mails does not force the total number of campaign e-mails sent by the system to fall below a desired quantity. Accurate tracking and analysis of bounced e-mails and information associated with the bounced e-mails may be helpful to ensure that the system accomplishes each campaign e-mail task. One method of accurately identifying bounced e-mails using encrypted header information may be described in “Variable Envelope Return Paths” by D. J. Bernstein at http://cr.yp.to/proto/verp.txt. However, past methods of identifying a message origin using encrypted header information may not be adapted for use within a demographic information gathering and incentive award system.